My Longest Night: A Twelve-Year-Old French Girl's Memories of D-Day

By Genevieve Duboscq

“In a childlike style that reflects the excitement of those dramatic, danger-filled days,” a young French girl portrays her heroism during World War II (Publishers Weekly).

Such was the sleepy nature of the Normandy town of Sainte-Mère-Église and such was the hostile nature of the “vast area of marshes and lowlands” surrounding it, that it seemed immune from the terror and chaos of war. Indeed, it seemed hard to imagine the local people ever hearing more than the distant rumblings of war or suffering more than those minor discomforts and humiliations which plague a rural community largely left alone by an Army of Occupation. The evening of June 5th, 1944 seemed like any other, yet for Geneviève Duboscq, not yet twelve, and her five-year-old brother, that evening would become their longest night—one they would never forget. An American paratrooper appeared on the Duboscq’s doorstep quickly followed by other battered emissaries of freedom. The Duboscq’s house became an emergency shelter; their knowledge of the region the difference between life and death, success and failure to those liberators from the sky. My Longest Night, with exemplary simplicity and poignancy, depicts D-Day and what followed in a way that it has never been presented before. Geneviève Dubsocq emerges as a remarkable young woman whose story will touch the hearts and minds of all who read it.

“One of the most personal descriptions of D-Day that we are likely to have.” —Christian Science Monitor

• Language: English
• Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media
• Release date: Jun 1, 1984
• ISBN: 9781473816558

Book preview

Prologue

The railway line between Paris and Cherbourg flies straight as an arrow from the capital to the port. Along the entire route – inaugurated three generations ago by Emperor Napoleon III – the French National Railways had constructed a series of small houses. These were provided as rent-free accommodation for the families whose job it was to raise and lower the level-crossing gates and make sure that tracks in their area were clear and in good shape.

Our house was Level-Crossing 104; as the name implies this was the one hundred and fourth such crossing on the Paris-Cherbourg line. It was a pretty little house, regularly repainted in soft ochre by the railway company, and surrounded by a profusion of flowers and climbing vines that my mother had planted. It was itself a proud, bright flower set in the midst of the barren marshy landscape. In fact, few people as poor as my parents were then could boast of living in such an attractive house.

There were four rooms: the kitchen and my parents’ bedroom on the ground floor, an attic and a second bedroom on the upper floor. For some unknown reason, the architect who had drawn up the plans for 104 had so laid it out that we children had to cross the attic in order to reach our bedroom. What was worse, the attic was big and airy and faced the marshes – but since it had never been completed it served absolutely no purpose. Our bedroom, on the other hand, was tiny and overlooked the railway tracks. Consequently, whenever a train thundered past beneath our window, my little brother and I would be literally shaken in our beds. The vibration seemed to emanate from within the earth itself – but it never really bothered us; we were used to it.

Level-Crossing 104 was over three miles from Sainte-Mère-Eglise, a village lying in the middle of the vast lowlands and marshes that are characteristic of that part of Normandy. I had to make that trip twice a day, on my way to school and back again. It was a pleasant enough walk in the mornings, and even for the first part of the return trip in the afternoons: two miles through peaceful countryside. But the final leg of the evening journey was another matter altogether. Once I’d reached the railway line, I still had a further mile to walk along the narrow path beside the tracks, with only the marshes on either side. The narrowness of the path itself, the unpredictable gusts of wind, the frequent trains thundering past spewing half-burnt cinders and jets of steam: I had to face these dangers every day.

We also had the use of another house, set on higher ground in the middle of a thirty-acre field. In earlier days this had been a sheep pen, and so we called it the Sheepfold. The part that had housed the sheep was enormous, with room for hundreds of animals, but we humans had to make do with a kitchen on the ground floor, where my parents slept, and a small bedroom on the floor above.

It’s hard to say which of the two houses I preferred. I liked them both. Life at the Sheepfold was rougher than at 104. Like all the other level-crossing houses, 104 had both a pump and a cistern. In times of severe drought, we could go and fetch our water from the Merderet, the little stream that ran through the marshes, which always dried up in summer. At the Sheepfold, though, water was more of a problem; we often had to share the water in the trough for the cattle and horses that my parents were paid to look after. Whether we stayed at one house or the other depended on my parents’ obligations; they needed both jobs to keep body and soul together.

My father’s duties included checking the state of the tracks between Crossings 104 and 103. Unless the marshes were dry, he often used to punt his way along beside the tracks in a flat-bottomed boat – and sometimes he let us go with him. For years these little jaunts were the greatest adventure in my life, floating through the marshes in a little boat with my father as captain, Papa Maurice.

September 3rd, 1939

The day war was declared, the church bells were rung in Sainte-Mère-Eglise.

I’d never heard bells ringing that way before; I’ll remember it as long as I live. I knew at once that it was some sort of alarm. I leant out of my bedroom window at the Sheepfold, staring transfixed at the church and its belltower.

The Amfreville bell responded immediately, followed by the bells of Fresville, Neuville-au-Plain and Chef-du-Pont. It was a strange, slow melody, even sadder than one of those autumn evenings when dusk is falling. To me, church bells are happy. Of course they do ring at funerals too – but those I’d learnt to recognize. No, this was no funeral. It was a new and menacing sound, a dismal tolling filled with storms and desolation over field and fen.

That day, Mama had left me – at the age of six and a half – in charge of my twelve-month-old baby brother Claude, who lay sleeping in his cot. As the bells began to ring, I was looking down at Mama from the bedroom window. She was wielding a sickle, doing her best to cut down the random tufts of thorny bushes that grew in the field. If a cow ate them, the thorns could do terrible damage in the stomach. Some people called them ‘cursed thistles’ but we knew them simply as ‘cow-killers’.

Mama was in charge of both the large herd of beef cattle and the thirty acres of pasture in which the cattle grazed. She had more than enough to do, even without two small children to look after. My father managed to spend every penny he earned drinking with his mates. So, as usual, my mother was working. The ordinary work of an ordinary day. As for Papa Maurice, he was nowhere to be seen. But we knew what he’d be up to: downing his daily draught of rough cider or Calvados.

Mama had been up at the crack of dawn, as always. Before leaving for the Leroux dairy farm where she and another woman shared the task of milking some twenty cows, she had come and laid my baby brother in my arms. He was fast asleep and I’d hardly dared to breathe for fear of waking him.

Little Claude was not just my brother, he was also my protégé – and my refuge. He was the only person in the world I felt really at ease with, apart from Mama. I watched him sleeping, attentive to every breath, fearful yet impatient for him to wake up, so that I could see him open his eyes and gurgle.

When she had finished milking the cows, at about nine o’clock, Mama came back to the Sheepfold. Upstairs in the bedroom, she took Claude from me and started to breastfeed him while I went downstairs to light the fire for breakfast. Our breakfasts were very simple, usually consisting of two slices of bread from a huge loaf, toasted over the fire and dipped in hot milk. Breakfast over, it would be time for work: out into the fields for Mama, cleaning the house for me. My elder sister and brother, Denise and Francis, both had jobs at the Leroux farm, doing general chores during the summer holidays.

So today had begun just like any ordinary day. Outside, everything was still. As I gazed from the upstairs window, away to the left I could see the tall elms along the fence bordering the road. They cast almost no shadow: it was noon. To my right, beyond the line of trees marking the end of the field, were the marshes through which the railway ran. The marshes were still dry; winter was a long way off. I could see some cows and horses grazing there – not ours, I knew. I wondered if Papa Maurice was watching them too, leaning up against the gate at Level-Crossing 104, making sure that none of the animals strayed on to the tracks as a train approached. Or maybe he was strolling along the line, looking out for any rails that might have buckled in the heat.

All was peace and serenity. Nothing bad could happen.

So why were the bells still ringing? I glanced at the baby and saw he was still asleep, then ran downstairs and out of the house to find Mama. She straightened up as she saw me coming. I noticed the tears on her cheeks and flung myself into her arms.

‘Mama! Mama! Why are the bells ringing?’

She held me tight. ‘It’s an alarm,’ she said. ‘They’re telling us that war has been declared.’

War? In my mind, war was something that happened far away, in some corner of France where neither my mother nor I would ever go.

‘War is when men go out and fight each other – kill each other,’ she said. Then she added sadly: ‘You’ll find out soon enough what war is. We’re going to get poorer and poorer, more and more unhappy…’

I pondered about this for a moment. I hadn’t realized that we were unhappy. Life was hard sometimes, and I already knew what it was to work, for I had my own share of responsibilities and chores. But I saw no reason to be sad.

‘Come on, Mama, let’s go into the house and I’ll make you a cup of coffee,’ I smiled, doing my best to cheer her up.

‘No, Geneviève, I can’t stop now,’ she told me. ‘I must finish my work.’

‘Oh Mama! The baby’s been such a poppet today…’

I knew that would do the trick. The minute I mentioned little Claude, a smile lightened her face and she followed me back into the house.

We made the coffee, and while she sat there sipping it I settled myself on her lap.

‘Don’t be sad,’ I urged her. ‘Why don’t you teach me a new song?’

For as long as I can remember, I have always loved singing. Sometimes I think I must have learned to sing even before I could talk. It was a pleasure that Mama had passed on to me; she used to teach me a new song every day, or at least a new verse to add to yesterday’s song. She had a very pretty voice, and so did I, I’m told. We both derived endless delight from singing. I used to sing to myself all day long – in the house after Papa Maurice had left for the day, or on the road to market with Mama, or meeting my sister Denise on her way home from school. Once or twice I even caught myself breaking into song in the middle of lessons.

But that day, Mama could hardly bring herself to sing. Looking at me sadly, she asked, ‘You really want me to teach you a new song – today of all days?’

Suddenly I remembered a story she’d once told me, about how King Louis XIII had put our country under the protection of the Holy Virgin. In time of danger, it was to Her we should pray. She couldn’t refuse our prayers. And I knew there was a song about this.

‘Teach me the one about the Virgin Mary and France,’ I said.

‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘But listen carefully. I’m only going to sing it once, then I must get back to work.’

Very softly she began to sing, with me repeating every line after her:

Holy Mary,

Our sole salvation,

Lend us your loving hand.

Save our nation,

Save our beloved land.

Certain memories remain forever engraved in your mind. Nothing will ever erase my memory of that first day of war or of that song, the words so simple yet full of meaning, like a prayer.

Mama patted my cheek and smiled, then went back out to the field, leaving me alone again with baby Claude. But not for long.

Papa Maurice arrived home earlier than expected that evening. His cap askew, his eyes glazed, his expression even more ferocious than usual, he stumbled across the threshold, grasping at the door frame to steady himself.

I knew what this meant – time to make myself scarce. I edged towards the stairs, hoping to sneak up to the bedroom before he spotted me. Too late. He focused his eyes on me and bellowed:

‘Trying to hide, are you? Come here!’

I had no choice but to obey. I knew what was in store for me. No one could protect me, not even Mama, who by now had returned from the field. Small and slight, she was no match for Papa Maurice.

‘Come here!’ he roared again.

Shaking, I walked over to him. The first slap caught me square in the face. Again, that huge hand – bigger than a washerwoman’s paddle – struck me full force. A trickle of blood ran down from my lips. That was enough. As he brought his hand down a third time, I jerked my head away at the last instant, and his hand crashed against the corner of the massive oak cupboard just behind me.

He let out a howl of pain. Then he collapsed into a chair, nursing his hand, and launched into a diatribe – only partly coherent – about the evils of war. ‘Madness!’ he thundered. ‘Total madness! Ought to be a law against it!’

I knew it was only a lull in the storm, so I sneaked quietly upstairs to my room. I would be safe there, for my father was scared stiff of the staircase. Even in his drunken stupor he seemed to sense how dangerous it would have been for him to climb those thirteen steps; he’d have fallen and cracked his skull in the attempt. So upstairs meant safety for me, at least until the next day.

A little later, Mama brought the baby up to me. Then she left for the Leroux farm to milk the cows again, as she always did each evening. As payment, she’d return home with three or four pints of fresh milk.

Night was falling. I thought back on the events of the day: the church bells spreading the dreadful news; my mother crying; the baby sleeping through it all; my father coming home drunk. These would be my memories of the first day of World War Two.

September 1939—June 1944

Jean Leroux was the most important man of the district. His farm, Noires Terres, was vast and imposing. I often used to go there with my mother, whom Monsieur Leroux and his wife Marguerite had known for many years, even before Mama married my father. They always found some work for her on the farm, and this was a godsend to us because they usually paid her in food rather than money. It was like the relationship between feudal lord and peasant in the Middle Ages – except, of course, that Mama worked voluntarily. And the sort of work that had to be done was pretty much the same as in medieval times. The grain, for example, had to be threshed by hand. Men and women alike would sit on the stone flags of the farm courtyard, each armed with a flail – an implement consisting of two pieces of wood, one long and one short, joined by leather thongs about four inches long – and all of them threshing the grain with steady rhythmic strokes. It was hard, laborious and tiring work, just as it had been for hundreds of years.

The Leroux farmhouse and its outhouses had been built in the form of a square around the courtyard. I remember wandering wide-eyed among the various buildings. You entered the courtyard through an archway between a cattle barn and some stables. To your right were more barns and storage sheds. Facing you across the courtyard was the farmhouse itself, only one storey high, but so vast it must have had ten or twelve rooms at least. I used to think how nice it would be to live in a house like that.

Back at the Sheepfold there was a big fireplace, built in such a way that we’d been able to install a wooden bench beneath the mantel, and little Claude and I used to sit in there on cold winter evenings. The other side of the hearth was reserved for baby chicks born in the off-season, for we raised chickens and rabbits to supplement our needs. At the back of the fireplace there was a heavy hook that held the big pot in which my mother always kept soup simmering. One winter evening I’ll never forget. I arrived home from school, frozen after the long walk, and sat down at my usual place by the fire. I was bending forward, warming my hands in front of the fire, when the hook supporting the soup pot suddenly came loose, and the whole pot of boiling soup spilt all over me.

I was so badly scalded I had to spend the rest of that winter in bed. A whole winter of endless days in the house alone, with only my little brother for company. To help the days pass, my mother gave me a doll, the first doll I ever had.

The doctor used to come twice a week to change my bandages. I dreaded his visits because it was a painful business having my dressings changed, and I could barely hold back the tears.

‘If you cry,’ the doctor would say, ‘I’ll take your doll away!’

He was no fool, that doctor. I had one toy, one real toy, a doll such as every little girl in the world dreams of having. And he knew I would never let him take it away.

So, when he leant over me to start removing my bandages, I would close my eyes and clench my teeth. Not a sound would escape my lips. That doll was my dream; pain was a part of life. If I wanted one, I would have to endure the other …

Meanwhile, we had more or less grown used to the presence of the Germans. Most of the fighting seemed to be far away, and the news of what was happening, brought to us by word of mouth, was vague and filled with rumours. Anyway, war was a serious matter, not for children’s ears, so the subject was rarely discussed when we were around. And yet we knew more than the grown-ups realized. We knew that war was, as Papa Maurice had said, total madness, but also that it was very complicated. For instance, we saw that some Frenchmen, our own people, actually wore armbands bearing the swastika – indeed, they seemed proud to wear them. They worked for the Germans, and the ones we most often met had the job of patrolling the railway line. They used to invite themselves to lunch with us whenever they felt like it, and they ate all our best food; they seemed to think it was their due.

As for those other Frenchmen, the ones who continued to fight for our liberation, we didn’t even know they existed. The Resistance? We’d never heard of it. But everyone had heard about a man called de Gaulle, the general who spoke on the wireless – we heard the grownups whispering about him. We didn’t have a wireless in our house, of course; even if we could have afforded one, neither 104 nor the Sheepfold had electricity. All we could do was listen to the rumours and pray. Every night before we went to bed, we prayed for this man de Gaulle, we prayed for bombs to fall on Germany, we prayed for the soldiers who were dying all over the world, and most of all we prayed for victory.

But while we waited for victory to come, we still had to survive. Necessity is the mother of invention, they say, and I had learnt the truth of this before I’d reached the age of ten. Monsieur Leroux used to let us pick over the fields after the harvest was in, and in this way we managed to gather enough grain of one sort or another to feed our chickens and turkeys for the following winter. And I used to go to the farm every day after school, to pick two big baskets full of dandelions for our barnyard friends. In summer they could fend for themselves, scratching about in the fields around the Sheepfold.

Food for ourselves was another matter. Government rations could not meet even our basic needs; somehow we always had to supplement them. One summer’s day I had the bright idea of going poaching. Little Claude was now big enough to come with me on my expeditions, so whenever I could find a free moment between chores, off we went, hand in hand, to explore the area around La Fière.

La Fière – ‘The Proud’ – what a grand name for such a tiny hamlet! There was only a handful of houses, which in winter stood a bare couple of inches above the water that inundated the surrounding swamps. People say, in fact, that the name La Fière came from a German or Anglo-Saxon word meaning ‘ferry’ and that it didn’t mean ‘proud’ at all. Apparently one can trace its origins back to the Norman pirates of old. According to the records of the fiefdoms of Normandy, a certain Gauthier de Sainte-Mère-Eglise and Thomas de la Fière each held a knight’s fiefdom under a grant from one Lord Lithaire. But that was all a long time ago, and there was nothing now to recall those days when the area was infested by fierce pirates and warlike knights. On the contrary: the utter peace, the wildfowl and other birds, the serenity of the countryside made La Fière a tiny corner of paradise. And, in 1943, it was our favourite spot for explorations.

On one particular day, our foray took us to a small river, the Merderet, that had all but dried up; in some places, all that was left of the stream was a series of muddy pools. Yet it was a real gold mine, this stream, for it was swarming with eels. Delicious! I knew at least three ways of preparing eels: fried in the pan, smoked in the fireplace (in which case you eat them guts and all) or salted. My mouth already watering, I began to think about how to catch them.

My father’s boat happened to be moored nearby and I knew he kept a pail in it, to bail out the water after it had rained. That pail was just what we needed to catch the eels. I scooped the pail into the stream, and up it came, brimful of the squirming eels.

That was the easy part. Now we had to carry our booty home. The pail was heavy, the river banks were steep and high. With every step we sank waist-high in the mud. But abandoning our treasure was out of the question. Luckily a willow tree bent down and lent us a helping hand so that we could scramble up on to firmer ground; but as for the pail, there was no way we could hoist it out of the mud without sinking back in ourselves. So we covered it with some large leaves from one of the wild plants that grew in profusion at the edge of the swamp; its sap is a magic balm against the sting of nettles. With the leaves protecting them, the eels would not suffer from the hot sun. Then, covered from head to foot in that foul-smelling mud, we ran home to the Sheepfold.

Seeing us arrive – filthy, out of breath and stinking to high heaven – my mother let out a shriek of alarm. But while she washed us down, combed our hair and dressed us in clean clothes, I told her of our miraculous discovery. At first she refused to believe me; to her it sounded too good to be true – or honest. But we finally persuaded her to come and see for herself. She saw, and was convinced. Effortlessly she lifted the pailful of eels from the mud and carried it home. The rest of that afternoon she spent cleaning and cooking or salting the manna that had come to us, not from heaven above but from the muddy waters below.

When we’d exhausted our provision of eels, I went back to the river and explored other pools near the one where I’d made the initial discovery. But miracles only happen once. The eels had gone. Still, there were other fish in the pools … I sat in Papa Maurice’s boat considering how I could possibly get those fish out of the water and into my mother’s frying pan, and I said a little prayer.

God must have been listening and smiling that day, up there on His throne, for He wasted no time in producing a solution to the problem. It wasn’t quite the solution I’d hoped for, but it would do.

I had discovered how to open the padlock that kept my father’s boat secured to a willow tree beside the stream. So now I could borrow the boat for fishing trips without permission. No one would have to know.

I set off to explore a section of the Merderet that I’d never visited before. For a while I used the heavy pole to punt the boat along, but it was exhausting work and I soon resorted to pulling myself forward by grabbing at the tall reeds at the river’s edge. My arms were growing more and more weary when suddenly it happened: another miracle! Just under the surface of the water, cleverly concealed by some poacher anxious to add to his own larder, lay several reed fish traps. And the traps were full!

The Merderet is so situated that from almost any spot on it you can see in all directions for miles around. No one, not a soul in sight. The stream was calm, the sun shining brightly. The only sounds I could hear were birdsong and the slap of water against the hull of my boat. I leaned over, plunged my arm into the water and came up with two traps, whose contents I tipped nonchalantly into the bottom of the boat. Lots of good lunches and dinners coming up! I managed to get the boat back to its mooring place, tied it up and returned home with my arms literally filled with fish and eels, which